Newsletter

The first edition of the Shakespeare Bookshop Newsletter was published in November of 2004 by Will Sharpe and Adam Sherratt. The SBN grew in popularity, and in September of 2006 was licensed with an ISSN number as an electronic and printed quarterly periodical. The original goal of the project was clearly stated on its first page: “We intend the newsletter to provide a regular update of new and recently published titles and forthcoming bookshop events”. We are delighted that the SBN has through the years become, in the words of the now Dr. Sharpe, “alarmingly official”.

The pages of the SBN tell the tale of a seven-year period of Shakespearean vitality. The Newsletter blossomed during a time of enormous productivity in a number of areas in the field. More biographies of Shakespeare have been written in the past seven years than in the previous four-hundred. James Shapiro’s 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare, Jonathan Bate’s Soul of the Age, Rene Weis’ Shakespeare Revealed, Charles Nicholl’s Shakespeare on Silver Street, Stephen Greenblatt’s Will in the World, Peter Ackroyd’s Shakespeare: The Biography, Bill Bryson’s Shakespeare, and Germaine Greer’s Shakespeare's Wife are only some of those books that not only re-ignited a fervent interest in the life and times of the dramatist that we all love, but also re-invented the way in which biographies should be written. Furthermore, the previous decade can be defined by a number of new editions of the plays in the Oxford, New Cambridge, Penguin, and Arden series’. Each of these editions, usually reviewed by our resident textual editor Will, colour the pages of the SBN. We have also been fortunate to have the support from so many of our authors – and not just any authors – who have given up their time to answer our burning questions. Interviews from Stanley Wells, Jonathan Bate, James Shapiro, David Crystal, and Helen Cooper contribute to the SBN’s ongoing efforts to connect authors to their readers.

Below is the online archive of the newsletter, where you can access every issue.